If you do not die in the war, you will likely return home, but you will not return home the same person as you left. Paul explains how his mind is being destroyed by the war. The innocence of youth is lost through killing other humans and seeing friends being brutally killed. The transformation can be seen through Remarque's symbolism of the bread. When the soldiers were comfortable in their hut, they cut off the parts of their bread that the rats ate. When they were fighting, and were starving, they wished that they had those parts back, and they even ate bread that had blood on it.
Paul says the war has destroyed their dreams. The apathy that comes from battle makes sensitive dreams impossible. War gives a wake-up call, that everything cannot be fine and dandy while men die horrific deaths at the hands of other men. Millions of men went to World War 1 because of the glorification of the war. Millions of men returned from the war with haunted minds that were incapable of feeling purity ever again. The war destroyed these men, it desensitized them, and we can and will continue to see it through Paul and his comrades.
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